Sometimes he repaired to ‘gay’ houses, hoping to learn something about Odette, although he dared not mention her name. «I have a little thing here, you’re sure to like,» the ‘manageress’ would greet him, and he would stay for an hour or so, talking dolefully to some poor girl who sat there astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was still quite young and attractive, said to him once, «Of course, what I should like would be to find a real friend, then he might be quite certain, I should never go with any other men again.» «Indeed, do you think it possible for a woman really to be touched by a man’s being in love with her, and never to be unfaithful to him?» asked Swann anxiously. «Why, surely! It all depends on their characters!» Swann could not help making the same remarks to these girls as would have delighted the Princesse des Laumes. To the one who was in search of a friend he said, with a smile: «But how nice of you, you’ve put on blue eyes, to go with your sash.» «And you too, you’ve got blue cuffs on.» «What a charming conversation we are having, for a place of this sort! I’m not boring you, am I; or keeping you?» «No, I’ve nothing to do, thank you. If you bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you talk.» «I am highly flattered…. Aren’t we behaving prettily?» he asked the ‘manageress,’ who had just looked in. «Why, yes, that’s just what I was saying to myself, how sensibly they’re behaving! But that’s how it is! People come to my house now, just to talk. The Prince was telling me, only the other day, that he’s far more comfortable here than with his wife. It seems that, nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect scandal, I call it. But I’ll leave you in peace now, I know when I’m not wanted,» she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the blue eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased to interest him. She did not know Odette.
The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended a sea-voyage; several of the ‘faithful’ spoke of accompanying him; the Verdurins could not face the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of all hired, and finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette was constantly going on a cruise. Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann would feel that he was beginning to detach himself from her, but, as though this moral distance were proportionate to the physical distance between them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he could not rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as everyone thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a series of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the ‘faithful’ only as time went on; anyhow, from Algiers they flitted to Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been absent for nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost happy. Albeit M. Verdurin had endeavoured to persuade the pianist and Dr. Cottard that their respective aunt and patients had no need of them, and that, in any event, it was most rash to allow Mme. Cottard to return to Paris, where, Mme. Verdurin assured him, a revolution had just broken out, he was obliged to grant them their liberty at Constantinople. And the painter came home with them. One day, shortly after the return of these four travellers, Swann, seeing an omnibus approach him, labelled ‘Luxembourg,’ and having some business there, had jumped on to it and had found himself sitting opposite Mme. Cottard, who was paying a round of visits to people whose ‘day’ it was, in full review order, with a plume in her hat, a silk dress, a muff, an umbrella (which would do for a parasol if the rain kept off), a card-case, and a pair of white gloves fresh from the cleaners. Wearing these badges of rank, she would, in fine weather, go on foot from one house to another in the same neighbourhood, but when she had to proceed to another district, would make use of a transfer-ticket on the omnibus. For the first minute or two, until the natural courtesy of the woman broke through the starched surface of the doctor’s-wife, not being certain, either, whether she ought to mention the Verdurins before Swann, she produced, quite naturally, in her slow and awkward, but not unattractive voice, which, every now and then, was completely drowned by the rattling of the omnibus, topics selected from those which she had picked up and would repeat in each of the score of houses up the stairs of which she clambered in the course of an afternoon.
«I needn’t ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it? Whose camp are you in, those who bless or those who curse? It’s the same in every house in Paris now, no one will speak of anything else but Machard’s portrait; you aren’t smart, you aren’t really cultured, you aren’t up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard’s portrait.»
Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard was afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to confess the omission.
«Oh, that’s quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite frank about it. You don’t consider yourself disgraced because you haven’t seen Machard’s portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well now, I have seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people who find it rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think it’s just ideal. Of course, she’s not a bit like the blue and yellow ladies that our friend Biche paints. That’s quite clear. But I must tell you, perfectly frankly (you’ll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I always say just what I think), that I don’t understand his work. I can quite see the good points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh, dear me, yes; and it’s certainly less odd than most of what he does, but even then he had to give the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard! Just listen to this now, the husband of my friend, I am on my way to see at this very moment (which has given me the very great pleasure of your company), has promised her that, if he is elected to the Academy (he is one of the Doctor’s colleagues), he will get Machard to paint her portrait. So she’s got something to look forward to! I have another friend who insists that she’d rather have Leloir. I’m only a wretched Philistine, and I’ve no doubt Leloir has perhaps more knowledge of painting even than Machard. But I do think that the most important thing about a portrait, especially when it’s going to cost ten thousand francs, is that it should be like, and a pleasant likeness, if you know what I mean.»
Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they had still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the Rue Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
«Your ears must have been burning,» she ventured, «while we were on the yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time.»
Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never uttered in the Verdurins’ presence.
«You see,» Mme. Cottard went on, «Mme. de Crécy was there; need I say more? When Odette is anywhere it’s never long before she begins talking about you. And you know quite well, it isn’t nasty things she says. What! you don’t believe me!» she went on, noticing that Svrann looked sceptical. And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without putting any evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the sense in which one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a pair of friends: «Why, she adores you! No, indeed; I’m sure it would never do to say anything against you when she was about; one would soon be taught one’s place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at a picture, for instance, she would say, ‘If only we had him here, he’s the man who could tell us whether it’s genuine or not. There’s no one like him for that.’ And all day long she would be saying, ‘What can he be doing just now? I do hope, he’s doing a little work! It’s too dreadful that a fellow with such gifts as he has should
